When I was a boxer, I wanted to be champion of the world, not the richest man in the world.
Poetry is the least imposition on silence in a world of chatter.
Learn the rules, break the rules, make up new rules, break the new rules.
Prose is prose because of what it includes; poetry is poetry because of what it leaves out.
Our job is to become more and more of what we are. The growth of a poet seems to be related to his or her becoming less and less embarrassed about more and more.
Much of our lives involves the word “no. ” In school we are mostly told, “Don't do it this way. Do it that way. ” But art is the big yes. In art, you get a chance to make something where there was nothing.
Try to write poems at least one person in the room will hate.
I've got a few guitars that I like. The trouble with fame and riches is that you have more than one guitar.
There isn't a hole out there [Augusta] that can't be birdied if you just think. But there isn't one that can't be double-bogeyed if you stop thinking.
The body should not just be something you see. It's also the inside of it. It's frightening and abstract and much more than pretty or not pretty. The shape of it is boring.
The people cannot be all, and always, well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented, in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions, it is lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. And what country can preserve its liberties, if its rulers are not warned from time to time, that this people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms.